Bomb Puzzle

[Mark]

You are a Bomb squad member and find yourself confronted with a device that has a number of wires on show. From your experience you know that one or more has to be cut to defuse it. Attatched to it is a clue from the culprit:

'Three of the nine- the darker of the two.'

The colours you have on show are-

Red, Blue, Black, Green, Grey, Yellow, White, Brown.

Which wire(s) do you cut?

[mathgrant]

All of them!

[Mark]

You are now dead!

[Agamemnon]

If the device has 8 wires, I assume at least 2 of these are crossed with another 2 in the device, leaving said 2 as red herrings or back up to the main circuit. Of the six working connectors, four will usually be from switch/timer/ignition to the explosive and the remaining 2 should be either trip or alarm wires. Going by the colours you state, the most common colours used are red, black, green & yellow for the main body of the device, and possibly blue and white for the backup. Stating all this, to sucessfully defuse the device, you need to trace from the ignition back to the charge, and check for any crossovers on the way. Only problem is that nowadays, so many failsafe links and connections are used, it's easier to do a controlled explosion using a robot or shield cover. So I would not cut any wires, get as far away as possible, and throw a big rock at it!

[JDTAY]

I say cut the green and grey wires.

[Milt]

I'm going to very carefully lift the bomb up and check if there's a hint underneath.

[Jen Aside]

Police bomb experts cordoned off a two-block area around the Kenmore, Ohio, home of John Call, fifty-four, while they dismantled what turned out to be a package containing paper, candle wax, wires, a battery, and a badly battered clock. Call had found what appeared to be a bomb ticking on his front porch. A police spokesman said that Call was particularly lucky that the device was not a bomb, because before calling police he had taken the package into his backyard and beat it with a bumper jack until it stopped ticking. Akron Beacon Journal

[Lepton]

For a place that doesn't even show up on my world map, Akron is all over the place...notably including the Darwin awards as well.

I'm with Aga on this. He's some sort of demolitions expert with the British armed forces.

[groza528]

Mail it to Moscow.

[ctrlaltdel]

i need more data...

how much time on the timer?
am i colorblind?
is it in a populated area or somewhere on a desert?
cant i just pick the bomb up and walk away with it?
can i call my superior?

oh yeah, and i would NOT cut white - as it is surely not the darker of any two...

[groza528]

[Mark]

There is 5 minutes on the timer but this is not important to solving it.

You are not colourblind.
The population of the area doesn't matter.
You may walk away with it but it is not advisable.
You can phone whoever you like.

Hint- the nine is not refering to colours or wires.

[One Skunk Todd]

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,

Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die

Unless we figure out this puzzle. =P

[Werebear]

Er, I think it's trying to tell us to force-feed this bomb to a black cat... You know, I always wondered why people who place bombs around leave clues as to how to disable the bomb, wouldn't it be smarter to leave clues as to how to make the thing go off instantly? That way, when clever smarty pants like us saunter in and clip wires, we would be instantly separated into our component atoms as a reward. Just a thought. I think I'll... RUN AWAY!! RUN AWAY!!!

Werebear

ROBIN: Would it help to confuse it if we run away more?
ARTHUR: Oh, shut up and go and change your armour.

[One Skunk Todd]

Well: As far as colors go, all the primary and secondary colors are listed as well as the broken colors. The only thing that's missing, the ninth color, seems to be purple. Purple can made by combining red and blue, and to me blue seems darker than red. I would snip the blue one and probably die rather quickly because I'm sure I'm missing something.

[One Skunk Todd]

Whoops: Missed orange. Guess I'm dead.

[One Skunk Todd]

Well: The two colors most obviously (to me) missing are orange and purple. Of those two I judge purple darker. Since there is no purple wire, the next best thing would be red and blue I guess. This doesn't work in with "the nine" that I can figure so this is probably incorrect also. Hope nobody minds my rambling, typing stuff down is the only way I can remember ideas, good or bad, that I have.

[NC]

Brown.

Three of the nine refers to the 3rd letter of 'nine'. N is a letter in two of the colors mentioned of which brown is the darker.

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Owner of the 10,000th post in Off-Topic -September 15 2000

[ctrlaltdel]

uhmmm.... its really no telling which color is darker than other. leaving out black and white obviously. the last post by nc looks very good. but theres tons of shades we would call green that we would also say are darker than tons of shades we would call brown. and vice versa of course.

[SaberKitty]

could "three of the nine the darker of the two" just be a sort of red herring-where "the darker of the two" is just thrown in to confuse, befuddle, and generally lead you astray?
the phrase itself has nine words, the third one being "the."
The only color which uses all those letters(t,h,& e) is white.

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"You mean you have other words?" cried the bird happily. "Well, by all means, use them. You're certainly not doing very well with the ones you have now."

[dave10000]

It's hard to believe that there's a single, clear right answer.

This is my attempt.

"Three of the nine" = 3/9 = third

Black is the third color.

"The darker of the two" -- well, only two of the colors are a "light" version and "dark" version of the same color -- grey and black. The darker of the two is black. That reinforces the earlier response.

Thus, I'd just cut the black wire.

BOOM!

[mith]

*~waves at NC~* Hadn't seen you in a while...

[Suspence]

My motto when defusing bombs or in any similar precarious predicament is WWMD, What Would MacGyver Do? Cut the green wire and you'll be all set.

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I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature

[Jen Aside]

The bomb already went off because mathgrant made it explode! End of problem!

[Suspence]

It's been way more than 5 minutes as well. I guess we are all dead already.

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I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature

[ctrlaltdel]

not me! even tho i may have had a bunch of stupid questions i never even came near the bomb!

ok ok, but we can learn from our experience, next time this situations occurs, ill know a few wires that i won't cut...

[Werebear]

Well, Mark was the culprit who put the bomb here... maybe we can get him to explain his master plan for world domination and escape while he's slavering and drooling on himself...

Werebear

[Mark]

Some of the ideas are better than the sollution.

Hint: Along with electrical devices and terrorism one of the culprits hobbys is astronomy.

[One Skunk Todd]

Well: Then three of the nine would obviously be the earth. But darker of the two? Darker between the earth and the moon? The only thing I can think is the "dark side of the moon". But what color is the moon? Grey, brown, yellow, orange and reddish on occasion? Once in a blue moon? A total eclipse? Pink Floyd? Should we cut red and white? I'm stumped (Cause the bomb took all my limbs off)

[JDTAY]

Maybe darker of the two means the darker of Earth two colors, blue and green.

[ctrlaltdel]

hmm... on the pics of earth taken from the space it looked blue and white to me. i'd guess blue...

[sweetwater]

Call the culprit and request for additional clues.

[Death Mage]

I cut the secret, borange wire in the back.

[Ghost Post]

Maybe it would help to know in which country the bomb is located - in Australia earth is green and yellow and green is the darker of these.

[Werebear]

"Three of the nine" probably refers to three planets... "Third of the nine" would refer to Earth. Mayb the planet colors, for instance, maybe Mars is red, Earth is green, Neptune is blue?

[Mark]

It's located in Britain.

[Werebear]

Well, that makes me feel a whole lot better! HEY MITH! You're supposed to cut the... um... WHITE and GREEN wires. Really. Honestly. would I lie?

Werebear

[Lepton]

As night falls on this long spring day, the clear sky sheds it's lights and begins to glow with the luminescence of the stars. Standing almost errect in the Southwest, Orion the great hunter looks down upon us all in our hunting expedition of our own. Shining brightly are Betelgeuse and Rigel, the left shoulder and right knee, seperated by the great hunter's 3-star belt. Betelgeuse, a brilliant red star, and Rigel, a white giant, shine the fondest of all nine of Orion's principle stars. Meanwhile, the pitiful humans conclude that Red, the darker of the two, should be cut. They do...

[One Skunk Todd]

Orion has nine stars? Dang! I thought of that a while ago but somehow I always think of it as only having seven, three in the belt and four in the corners. Darn light pollution.

[Lepton]

Well, technically, there's an almost infinite amount of stars in orion. I've always identified 9 in particular...
hmm